firebug xpath usage

$x

This command returns an array of HTML or XML elements matching the given XPath expression. This means it is actually a shortcut for document.evaluate().

[edit] Syntax

$x(xpath [, contextNode [, resultType]])

[edit] Parameters

[edit] xpath

XPath expression used to match the elements to return. This follows the syntax of document.evaluate(). (required)

[edit] contextNode

Element used as root node for the XPath expression. (optional; added in Firebug 1.11)

[edit] resultType

Object type returned by the function. (optional; added in Firebug 1.11)

Option	document.evaluate() equivalent	Description
"number"	XPathResult.NUMBER_TYPE	Numerical value
"string"	XPathResult.STRING_TYPE	String value
"bool"	XPathResult.BOOLEAN_TYPE	Boolean value
"node"	XPathResult.FIRST_ORDERED_NODE_TYPE	Single HTML element
"nodes"	XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_ITERATOR_TYPE	Array of HTML elements

[edit] Examples

$x("//h1")

This returns an array of all <h1>s of a page.

$x("//input[@type='checkbox']")

This returns an array of all checkboxes of a page.

$x("count(//h1)>5")

This checks whether there are more than five <h1>s in the page and returns true or false. (requires Firebug 1.11 or higher)

$x("//p/b[1]/text()")

This returns an array of all text nodes within every first <b> of all <p>s of a page.

$x(".//button", $$("form")[1])

This returns an array of all <buttons> within the second <form> of a page. (requires Firebug 1.11 or higher)

$x("//p", document, "node")

This returns the first <p> inside the page. (requires Firebug 1.11 or higher)